Little

by Edward Carey

  “No, Georges, I don’t. I’m certain I’ve never seen anyone who looks like that.”

  “Why, it’s you, miss.”

  “Me?”

  “You.”

  “I look like that?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Oh.”

  It seemed to me the very worst news.

  “You’re very quiet, miss.”

  I was.

  “I thought it would be flattering,” he said, “you know, to have a portrait done of yourself.”

  “That is how he sees me.”

  “Done from memory.”

  “I’m not a vain person. I never was.”

  “How he toiled over it.”

  “It has my old clothes, I see that now, and my measurements, I suppose.”

  “Indeed it is unmistakable.”

  “Is it?”

  “He took a deal of trouble over it.”

  “Did he? Did he?”

  “Shall I tell you a story?”

  “Yes, Georges, do.”

  “There then. I shall tell you about this doll. Perhaps it will help. Now, here I go. Whenever Monsieur Edmond came to visit here, he would sit with his mother awhile, or with his father’s dummy-shape, but later he started climbing up to the attic. There, after a time, visit by visit, he carved. He made you, by himself, up in the topmost rooms, when he was away from his wife. He carved your head out of one of the joists in the attic, though the attic complained of it so. He tugged the joist away, and since then I believe it’s slumped a bit, the attic. Afterward, whenever he came to visit, he would sit upstairs beside you.

  “When the widow at last found the doll, there was great noise. The doll was smashed about a good deal. He came less often afterward—his wife would not allow it—and there was some shouting, I recall, between Madame Cornélie and the widow. But the widow found her own uses for the doll. She put it in the windows—I’m sorry, miss—to scare the boulevard children when they came spying. And sometimes it was used as a weight, to press things down. It has propped doors open also. Jacques sometimes lugged it out onto the steps to sit beside him. The doll was let stay. And that’s the story, madame, of the doll, if you don’t mind.”

  Tears, tears for Edmond then and for me, snot and sobs.

  “Is he very broken?” I asked. “Do tell me, Georges.”

  “I believe so.”

  “And Cornélie threw him out?”

  “We don’t see her anymore. The Ticres brought him back. Madame Cornélie would not own him in such a state. She broke the marriage. In court, she did it proper. She protested how unhusbandly Monsieur Edmond was. And when the judge asked Monsieur Edmond to speak he just muttered his nonsense, and so the judge broke the marriage and he came back here.”

  “With a mustache and with his fingers dyed with ink.”

  “The widow cannot have him around the public. He is an unhappy sight. He disturbs people.”

  “She hides him.”

  “The wax people terrify him. He is happier in the top rooms. Food is taken up to him, and when he tries to come downstairs one of us boys will guide him back up. Those rooms are his; they are always spoken of as dangerous, but only so that he will be left alone. He is quite happy by himself. Much happier than he was. It was thought that you might distress him, so you were told never to go upstairs.”

  “But he found me out.”

  “Yes, he found you out, miss.”

  “He talks such nonsense.”

  “They’re advertisements, miss. Bills they did at the Ticre printworks. He learned them all. It’s all he ever says these days. He just repeats them, so many different ones, over and over. He is good for only light duties, and not really those. Sometimes he is given a little needlework, but he does prick himself.”

  “Does the widow go to him?”

  “Sometimes. But she is such a proud lady, she does not like to show her softer side.”

  “She leaves him alone up there?”

  “I think he is quite content.”

  “We shall see,” I said.

  I went up and down to him all that day and brought him his food. He kept very still there, muttering words from the printers.

  When at last she came home, I was waiting. I went upstairs, took Edmond’s hand, and led him back down. Into her office, without a knock.

  “It’s Edmond,” I said to her. “This is Edmond!”

  With trembling, furious face, with clenched jaw, she hissed: “Get him away! Back up to the top! Visitors are expected any minute!”

  “Stay, Edmond!”

  “GET HIM OUT!”

  A boy came.

  “This is your own son,” I said. “Will you not own him?”

  “NOW! OUT!”

  “Polite notice,” Edmond said, louder than usual, “no trespassing.”

  He went of his own accord, silently, from the room. The boy followed. I was left alone with her.

  “Do not presume to know me,” she said. “Get in my way again and I shall smother you. With these own hands I will do it. I’ll throttle the life out of you, I’ll extinguish you and be the happier for it. I could do it now. Who are you, a speck, and who am I? Get out!”

  I got out, but that was only the beginning of it.

  I washed Edmond’s fingers every day. I fed him. I went up and down the stairs for him. I lured him back to the workshop. I would find him again, I resolved, if Edmond was in there I’d find him.

  “Edmond, you know me,” I said. “You do. I’m back now. I’m here again.”

  “Ship’s chandler.”

  “I won’t leave you in the attic.”

  “We buy teeth.”

  “I’ll have you downstairs with me.”

  “Very convenient premises, apply within.”

  “I’ll have you about me, you’ll be my society again.”

  “Containing an area of about six thousand feet.”

  “And somewhere in all those words . . .”

  “Frontage about one hundred thirty-one.”

  “ . . . some genuine Edmond will fall out.”

  “To be let on lease.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Everyone is inside.

  Louis-Sébastien Mercier came to visit. He sought me out in my workshop where I made hands with Georges. Edmond sat mute in the corner.

  “There you are again, Little! Back on the real stage!”

  “Not too loud, sir, if you please. It isn’t good for Edmond. See him there. See what has become of him.”

  “Ah yes, I had heard. But, Marie,” he said, brightening, “I’ve seen your royal ones!”

  “Have you? How is Elisabeth?”

  “I mean, of course, the waxes. So bold. To show them so!”

  “Thank you. And how are you, dear Monsieur Mercier? How are your shoes?”

  “We are kept at it. How we are kept at it!”

  As Georges and I worked on, Mercier told us how the times kept him running from place to place, as if all of Paris were in continual earthquake. Sometimes, he said, he saw the widow rushing about too, breathless, gathering information. He took off his shoes and passed them around. They were indeed worn very thin. He showed us a little booklet he had recently finished, its subject the Celebrated Salons of Wax, and read to us a passage from it:

  In these new and fast-paced days, the Cabinet of Doctor Curtius is the essential sight at the Palais-Royal and on the whole of the boulevard. Some go so far as to say that nothing can beat it in the entire capital. Curtius’ is an excellent entertainment for men of any profession, for children, for women, for the aged, for the curious, for the uninformed, for the brave, for the uninspired, for the tired of life, for the understimulated, for the overdressed, for the ragged, for weaklings, for the powerful, for masters and for the
ir servants, for the daring and for the proper, for the natives to understand quite how their capital works in these shifting times and for the foreigners to understand an unfamiliar city.

  There is scarcely a person in Paris for whom Curtius’ is not relevant these extraordinary days. No matter how well you think you know the city, Curtius’ always holds surprises for you—as if it is Doctor Curtius himself who decides who is in and who is out. All that is well known, all that is the greatest, all that is extraordinary and inspiring, all that is abominable, all of that is kept concentrated in the Cabinet. Where famous living personages may disappoint in real life, appearing briefly and at too great a distance, at Curtius’ they never disappoint. In his establishment, the most exclusive of ladies and gentlemen have time for simply everyone.

  For this is true: Curtius, in his great hall, has abolished privilege! Curtius has dismissed all laws of etiquette. Curtius has done away with class. Where else in the world might a pauper approach a king? Might the mediocre touch genius? Might ugliness draw close—without shame—to beauty? The Cabinet is the only place.

  It is true that his certain magic works only within the confines of his places of exhibition; once outside, the gravity of everyday pressures and worries and hopes instantly reasserts itself. But who can complain when they have seen the wonder of a schoolboy coming face-to-face with his latest hero? Who can complain when they see a scholar from the Sorbonne approaching in reverence the figure of the great deceased author whose words so move his life? Who can complain when an ordinary law-abiding matron can behold in terror and proximity the greatest murderer of the age? Who indeed can complain when any subject of the country of France may visit the Palais-Royal and see, at his own convenience, on any day of the week, the royal family seated for dinner, and step closer and closer still, and feel a connection to the king or the queen that has never been felt before, and may even, for the cost of three livres, if he should be so brave—and few are—even dare to . . . TOUCH?

  So be it!

  Even the mystery of royalty is solved at the Cabinet of Doctor Curtius!

  “Thank you, Monsieur Mercier,” I said, taking the slim volume. “I shall treasure it.”

  “Do you think, Little, do you think now they might consider a new bust of me? For the Palais-Royal, of course, not for here. Do you think they would?”

  “Who can say?” I said. “It is not up to me.”

  “You don’t think so, do you?”

  “I do not know,” I said.

  “No, no,” he muttered. “I try each time for the wax lottery, put my name with the others.”

  “Pure milk, new-laid eggs,” said Edmond.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  In which heads are stolen.

  The widow changed the uniforms of the front-of-house staff. Silk suits were removed and in their stead were black cotton coats and black hose, simple black three-cornered hats, but all adorned still with C rosettes. This somber outfit was a replica of the dress worn by the representatives of the common people at the newly formed parliament.

  One Sunday, not long after my return, bells sounded all about the city, clanging far longer than was usual. We labored in our workshops through the morning, thinking little of it, though the bells continued to sound and Edmond paced back and forth in his attic. I went up to calm him, but the noise had disturbed him and he was very wretched. I held his ears; that always helped. I told him that the bells were bound to stop soon, but they did not.

  And in the late afternoon the widow, screaming, returned to the Monkey House, bursting into my master’s workshop.

  “Stolen! Stolen! Property taken! Heads! Our heads, Curtius!”

  What a red-faced, sweating widow it was.

  “Madame!” cried Curtius. “What troubles you?”

  “Heads! Heads!” She panted.

  “Yes,” said Curtius. “Any in particular?”

  “Yes,” she gasped, struggling for breath, “ripped from us at the Palais-Royal!”

  “A robbery?”

  “In broadest daylight. Hundreds of them!”

  “Hundreds of heads?”

  “No, people! Hundreds of thieves, all demanding the same thing.”

  “Was it heads?”

  “Yes, Curtius! Our property taken from us!”

  “But whose heads?”

  “Ours!”

  “But which?”

  “Minister Necker and the Duc d’Orléans.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “To hold them high and march them through the streets for a funeral march.”

  “But they are ours! Why did they?”

  “You must keep up, Curtius! You must open your ears. The minister has been dismissed, and the duc banished, and the people are marching around the city, holding high our heads. Since the actual men are absent, the heads in proxy must take their place.”

  “They should get their own heads of Necker and Orléans. Those ones are ours!”

  “They chanted, banged on the windows, pushed themselves into the salon with no ticket between them, demanding heads.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “I gave them over. They would only have taken them anyway, and done who knows what damage. They wanted the king too, but I begged them, saying the king was a whole figure and very heavy while the other two were only busts.”

  That king was my work. “I’m glad the king is safe,” I said. “Thank you for saving him.”

  The widow shifted so her back was toward me.

  “We’ll have them arrested,” groaned Curtius. “I made them! Private property!”

  “I took two names. François Pépin, a peddler, and André Ladry, a limonadier.”

  “They will be charged!”

  “They promised to return the heads.”

  “You should never have let them go.”

  “You weren’t there,” she whispered—quietly, but I heard her. “I was the only one there, and I was frightened.”

  Such a silence then, a silence like a hole, like a ripped opening, as if the widow had come unstitched and with it our world.

  “You, frightened?” Curtius whispered. “You? I’ll never believe it.”

  “I thought they would kill me, these people. It would be easily done. They’d step forward and nothing would stop them if they wanted to. Take a sharp knife, thrust it quick in and out, and I’d be spilling. I might have died, I might have. It’s luck, I suppose in the end, Philippe,” she said, and tears came out of her.

  “You never called me Philippe before.”

  That was the second shock.

  I think we were all frightened then.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Concerning Captain Curtius.

  Wax is used upon muskets, upon rifles and shotguns. It greases the triggers to make them sharper; it smooths down the barrels to help the shot and powder pass through efficiently.

  There were noises throughout the night. Shouting on the boulevard, glass smashed. A distant report of shooting. These sounds were picked up in the Great Monkey House, and the Great Monkey House made something of its own of them: it twisted them and elongated them, bounced them and seemed loath to let them fade. They played a misery upon Edmond and stole his sleep from him. I do not know how many doors and windows were smashed that night, only that the Monkey House gates stood firm.

  In the morning all the bells of the city sang together, calling to one another across Paris. In the Great Monkey House, nothing. The gates were kept shut up. The staff who lived about the city did not arrive for work. Only the bookkeeper, Martin Millot, appeared, anxious to see that all was safe. Slowly, distractedly, we who remained worked in the back rooms. Millot counted money, Jacques cut cloth, the widow stitched busts, my master made heads, and I hands. Edmond kept away because his mother was present. As the day went on, lost in wax or hairs or wood or ca
nvas, we forgot everything but what was before us.

  It wasn’t until nearly afternoon that our own bell rang. Jacques went to the gate. He returned with two boulevard businessmen: the beanpole Monsieur Nicolet, master of funambulists—his brick building was the Grandes Danseurs de Corde—and flame-headed Doctor Graham, he of the Celestial Bed. I hadn’t known it until he spoke, but Graham was a Scot—a foreigner like my master and me.

  These two men had come, they said, because no place in the boulevard was as famous as the Great Monkey House. They knew that the events of the night must have terrified us, who had so much to lose. Wasn’t it an appalling thing, they asked, that no one now held the reins to the city? Unless something was done, and soon, the city would be driven into the abyss. Anarchy would spread from quarter to quarter; the city would burn and all inside it would be lost.

  “We know about loss,” said the widow. “Yesterday, two of our heads were taken from us.”

  “Necker,” said Curtius. “The Duc d’Orléans.”

  “The men who stole from you, who marched illegally, were fired upon and dispersed.”

  “And our heads?”

  “There’s blood now on the streets of Paris. Order must be returned.”

  “Will we get our heads back?”

  They had just come from the Hôtel de Ville. There had been a meeting; that was why the tocsin had sounded. These were desperate times, the two men agreed; it was easy to stay at home and pull the bedcovers over your heads, but if nothing was done, someone would rip the bedcovers from your face and tug you naked into the street. This last opinion was delivered specifically to Curtius.

  In the meeting at the Hôtel de Ville it was proposed that a citizens’ militia be formed, a militia large enough to protect the city from both those uniformed terrors outside its walls and the un-uniformed ones inside. The men paused, then spoke slowly and clearly: It would be a great relief to the people of the boulevard and the surrounding district, they said, if Curtius, as its most prominent personality, would volunteer himself to be the local captain of the people’s militia. Will you do it, Captain Curtius? they said.